


Smoke and Mirrors

by Mercy



Category: Nathan Barley (TV), The Mighty Boosh
Genre: Crossover, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-04-02
Updated: 2010-04-02
Packaged: 2017-10-09 10:01:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,999
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/85981
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mercy/pseuds/Mercy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Paths cross, lips do stuff to other lips, feelings are felt, music is made. May contain chavs, made-up publications, a fully intact fourth wall, and peer pressure from Naboo. May not contain Bollo, who would nevertheless like you to know that Sugar Ape was named after him. Set a bit post-series for NB and post-S3 for Boosh.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Smoke and Mirrors

**Author's Note:**

> Shiny gold stars to waqaychay for the beta, as well as big fat hearts to storyfan, who_is_small, and random_nexus for viewing this mess in its early stages and assuring me it was not a big sinking failboat.

1.

The bus is taking ages, which normally wouldn't bother Jones. He'd just listen to a track on low volume and let screaming children and ringtones and laughter bleed into his headphones and see what it can make of itself. Once there'd been a woman with such a delightful cackle that he'd followed her halfway to Ealing trying to get a decent recording of it. The derisive _hurr-hurr_ of the chavs that have piled on and surrounded him now, unfortunately, isn't worth immortalising. He sinks a bit deeper into his hoodie (a pink one liberated from Claire, and the partial cause of the heckling) and tries to ignore them or be amused, but they're waving faux-gold-ringed sausage fingers in his face and trying to tug at his hair. He can feel the other passengers uncomfortably looking away. It's not worth trying to shock them by answering back with something cheeky, or with something so mad they'll think he's a dangerous lunatic, because there's not exactly anywhere else for any of them to go. He just waits it out till the bus inches to a stop in a part of Dalston he can't remember ever even existing before and ducks between them for the exit. They don't follow and he answers their obscene catcalls with a cheery wave from the safety of the pavement.

He's just down the street from a club and thinks for a moment that he sees Dan go inside, but that can't be because Dan's texting him. _Swamp Woman teeming with idiots, _it says, so he can't be in Dalston. It's the third bar in as many months that Dan's least favourite demographic have deemed 'well endoscopic' or whatever it is this week. He suspects there may actually be spies following Dan, clamouring at the tails of his imaginary cassock. It would probably be easier if they just gave in and started going to the Elephant's Head, which is so obvious that not even the most devout self-styled disciple would put a toe through the door, but the music there tends to make Jones want to peel his own face off. _Where are you? _Dan's text continues, complete with capital letters and punctuation. He hates textspeak and it never fails to make Jones smile.

Jones has to look at the posters outside the club to be able to answer. He's actually heard of one of the guys DJing, never seen him but been led to believe he's either worth a listen or total rubbish, which at least means it won't be mediocre. It'll do. Jones sends back _dalston smwhere velvet onion_ (Dan's text grammar makes him smile, but doesn't inspire him to bother with pressing the extra buttons) and joins the queue at the door.

Jones walked in and sat down at the bar during a break, so he's already stuck with his his 'Special: Flirtini €6' (which he actually pays for in euros for a laugh because he's got some on him, and the barman takes them without batting an eye) when his ears start to bleed. It's sugary electro-wank and the disproportionately female dance floor is screaming and eating it up. He's not close enough to see the DJ for the machines belching fog and glitter, but imagines some stylie prettyboy with more hair product than brains and talent combined. At times like this, he knows how Dan feels, adrift in a sea of idiots. The difference is that Jones won't sit here steeping in righteous annoyance. He will finish his drink, because he paid for it and it's actually quite nice, but he will do it in peace on the terrace. Then he will go home and see if he can wring a smile out of Dan. Who, he sees, has texted him back. _I'll meet you._

_dont bother its shit. fuckin off soons i finish drink._

__There is almost no one else outside, which is a testament to this berk's draw if his appeal is stronger than absolutely everyone's need for nicotine. The only other person out there is scribbling into a little notebook. He looks a bit like Dan, if Dan were attacked by the 90% clearance rack in a vintage shop. Jones can't pinpoint when he started framing everything in terms of Dan, but he barely even notices it anymore.

"Oi, mate, give you 50p for a fag."

The man's head snaps up. "That was just graffiti!" he exclaims, looking hunted.

"What? No, I said a fag. A cigarette, y'know?"

"Oh." He relaxes and Jones wonders what he thought he said. "No, I don't smoke."

"Fair dos. Came out here to save your ears, then?"

"It's a bit much for me in there," he says with an air of sheepish confession.

"Right? Any tosser with a laptop and a mixer thinks he's a DJ."

"Whoa, now. That's my best mate you're slagging off there, sir."

He seems an unlikely best mate for anyone who'd be mashing up the Human League with Joan Jett for a crowd of screaming girls, but whatever. "Sorry," Jones says with a shrug. He'll stand by his opinion but he'd rather not get in a fight.

"It's all right," the man sighs. "I don't honestly like it much myself." He starts in on a bona fide monologue about hot bebop and Weather Report and Jones tries not to gape or laugh, because he's so fucking earnest and so clearly believes in it, and if there's anything Jones respects, it's that. And then he's genuinely interested, because Howard (as his name turns out to be) starts talking about hooking a Moog up to a crab and a shoe.

"Oh, I've gotta see that!"

"Really? Er. I mean, I could, you know. Show you. Sometime." Howard actually blushes. Poor awkward bastard.

"Now?"

"Yeah! Or no, wait, I should stay for the rest of the-- No, you know what? Vince won't notice. Let's go. It's just round the corner."

Two hours later, Jones is pulling the guts out of an old telephone and showing Howard what wires do what and making new noises and laughing, and it's the most fun he's had in ages without being absolutely plastered. And underneath the tragic clothes and questionable moustache, Howard's really pretty fit, but he tends to flinch away when Jones touches his hand, so maybe kissing him isn't a great idea even if he finds he kind of wants to. Jones likes kissing the way some people like Doctor Who or Hobnobs. He will kiss nearly anyone if he likes them a bit, which has got him into trouble a few times. Howard probably won't hit him, but he might think it's meant to be more than that, because sometimes his gaze lingers a bit and he blushes. Jones is still weighing the pros and cons when the door at the bottom of the stairs bangs open and shut, punctuated by a lot of shuffling and giggling.

"That'll be Vince and his bit of fun for the night," Howard sighs. And yeah, kissing him would be a really bad idea, because he's seen that look and it's not Jones he wants even if he might settle for it. Or, actually....

"Wanna make him jealous?" Jones says with a grin. He shuffles across to Howard and lays a hand on his cheek to leave him in no doubt of how. It's a good plan, he thinks. They both get a kiss at the very least, and maybe Howard will get something more.

Howard's eyes go wide, and him working out that he can't deny his way past this is nearly visible. "I...yeah. All right."

So he kisses Howard. It's nice, really nice. Howard's shy and soft and a bit sweet about it, big warm hand curling into the back of Jones's hair. He had it off with Dan, once, right after they first met, both off their faces, and the way it started felt a bit like this. Dan apologised the next morning, Jones hid his disappointment, and they haven't talked about it since, not even when Dan gets pissed enough to snog him right before passing out. That hasn't happened lately, though.

Jones remembers where he is and what he's meant to be doing when he hears two sets of drunken feet stumbling up the stairs. He moans theatrically.

"Howard!?"

Then it all goes a bit Rocky Horror. Jones falls aside and turns round in mock surprise that turns real, because there with his shirt half unbuttoned and swollen lips and a bulge in his jeans is-- "Dan!?"

"Vince!"

"Jones!?"

It's Vince who unfreezes first, with such a thunderous look that the plan must have worked. "What the hell, Howard?"

"I could say the same to you, sir!"

The two of them start arguing in what sounds like some sort of secret code and seem to forget anyone else is there. Jones catches Dan's eye and Dan cuts his gaze towards the door and they run out into the night together.

There's no real embarrassment beyond the initial surprise of the unexpected encounter; they've known each other nearly ten years, shared living space for two and both witnessed much worse. Except... "Dan, you know that was a guy, yeah?" Because he remembers the 'straight' card being part of Dan's argument, not that Jones really believed him, and it was literally last century.

Dan ducks his head, sheepish around the cigarette he's lighting. "Wasn't sure at first, but the cock sort of gave it away."

Jones wiggles his fingers and Dan hands him the fag. He could easily light another one for himself, but instead they pass it back and forth as they walk. The filter's a bit greasy and sweet. "Are you wearing cherry lip balm?" Jones asks.

"Vince was."

Jones wipes the back of his hand across his mouth. "Great, 'm swapping fluids with your bit of fluff."

"Just spit. Anyway, I'm swapping with yours."

"That wasn't for real," Jones admits. "We were just having a laugh and then he looked all hurt when you 'n Vince crashed in all giggly, so I said let's make him jealous. What's your excuse? And if you tell me you heard any of his set and still wanted to get off with him, I might never respect you again."

"Can't have been that bad. I didn't see it, but girls kept throwing themselves at him the whole time we were talking."

"Have you seen him? He could do a shit on the decks and throw it at them and they'd still try to follow him home."

"Point." Dan plucks the fag from between Jones's fingers without waiting for him to pass it back.

"Why him, anyway? He's like a textbook Idiot. And the whole cock thing."

Dan sighs. "I didn't see your text before I got there. He came onto me and I was bored."

Classic Ashcroft logic. "Too pissed to be bothered, you mean."

"Is that Claire's jumper?" And a subject change ripped straight from Jones's playbook.

"Was. She can have it back when she leaves the Dark Side."

"I'm the one meant to hate her."

"Yeah, but you don't care about anything so somebody has to do it for you."

"I care. Fuck, my leg hurts. Can we sit down?" Dan's already sat on someone's garden wall by the time the question is out of his mouth. His left knee is a mass of scars, some from the fall and some from the surgery to put it back together. He'll be moaning in pain at 5 a.m. and Jones will get him a hot compress and paracetamol that he will lie and say has codeine in. He's probably going to need another surgery to pull all the metal back out, but Dan will ignore that until it's unbearable.  
   
"Maybe if you weren't heftin' electro-ponces about in doorways," Jone's says mildly. He lays a hand on Dan's knee, knowing the warmth will help a little.

"Now who's jealous?"

"Not a bit of it." Rather a lot of it. "He ain't good enough for you and he's in love with his depressive best mate anyway." No, that doesn't sound like anyone else we know. "Plus, you ain't queer, supposedly."

"I haven't claimed that in years."

Jones refuses to allow his world to shift. It doesn't matter, really, what Dan is or isn't. Just because the 'straight' excuse is no longer there doesn't mean Dan hasn't got a whole arsenal of other ones. "You alright to walk? I can phone for a cab."

"I'll make it. It's not far now. Just give me a minute."

Jones rubs at Dan's knee. Dan's hand comes down to cover his and rather surprisingly stays there. "Your massive Northern paw could swallow mine without chewing."

He thinks of Dan's hands round the necks of guitars, never when there's anybody there to hear it. But Dan plays with his eyes closed and Jones can be quiet when he needs to. It makes Dan look happy, peaceful. Maybe that's why he keeps that particular talent a secret, since living off his writing abilities hasn't exactly brought him sunshine and pancakes. He doesn't write for SugaRAPE anymore, but what freelance work he gets is because the editors know that stuff. He's got a short story published in an American magazine that he thinks Jones doesn't know about, except Dan absentmindedly left him a note on the blank side of the cheque stub one day. He knows Dan is afraid of something he values getting broken, but he wishes Dan would trust him with it. If nothing else so that Jones won't have to go to seven different newsagents just to read the story.

"You should have dainty buttoned gloves," Dan says à propos of the hand comment.

"I'd quite like that. All leathery and Victorian." He waves his free hand about in a fey pinky-fluttering gesture and pitches his voice higher. "Cup of tea, cup of tea."

Dan laughs, a warm deep one that Jones doesn't hear often enough. "You sound like Bertie Wooster kneed in the groin."

"I was trying for the blonde bird in that whatsit. But Hugh Laurie's well fit."

"What, all scruffy and American?"

"'Specially all scruffy and American. I like the way he fondles a guitar."

"You would," Dan says at the same time as Jones's brain.

"That's why you never play." Jones takes a light swipe at Dan's perpetual almost-beard. "You're afraid I'll swoon."

"No, it's 'cause I'm rubbish," Dan mutters. He takes his hand away and levers himself up. "C'mon, let's get home."

Jones stands, but then freezes stupidly in the middle of the pavement. Because Dan has said 'back home' meaning Leeds and said yes when asked if he's been home or wants to go home, but in terms of what Dan has called where they live, it's just been 'the house' (sometimes 'the House' with that subtle difference of inflection) if it's been anything. It's a stupid little victory that makes Jones's heart dance.

Dan looks back. "You coming?"

Jones jogs the few steps to his side and wraps an arm round his waist, ready with an explanation about not straining Dan's knee, but he's not asked to give it. Dan drapes his arm over Jones's shoulders, and after a few steps leans on him just a little, to let Jones take some of his weight.

It's something.

  
2.

Howard turns the swirly pink card over and around in the palm of his hand. It reads, simply, 'Jones' with a phone number and email address at the bottom. He's not even sure he's meant to have it; he found it on the floor after Vince shouted, 'Well, he must've been blind-pissed and desperate to wanna get off with you!' and slammed off to his room.

They haven't talked about it. They've barely spoken at all, really, the last three days. The atmosphere in the shop and the flat has been positively arctic, and Howard knows what the Arctic feels like. He wonders, in a gloomy panic, if they've broken it once and for all. Broken _them._ He can't wholly blame Vince this time, nor himself. There were equal measures of cruelty in that argument. True, if Howard hadn't agreed to Jones's scheme, they probably wouldn't be where they are now. If Howard hadn't been a sad old sod who jumped at the chance of even a pretend bit of affection. If he hadn't thought, in that moment, that Jones looked a bit like the younger sweeter Vince he missed every day.

Howard is not a massive gayist, but he may indeed be just a little bit gay.

But Vince is to blame too. He's got no right to be telling Howard whom he can and can't kiss. He gave that up when he rejected Howard on the roof.

It's not that he thinks Jones is responsible (though he might be a bit) or that he'll be able to fix anything, but all kissing schemes aside, he thought they were getting on rather well and he could honestly use a friend. And maybe, just a little bit in the back of his mind, he hopes it'll get up Vince's nose.

He dials. Three rings and then what sounds like a chipmunk talking through a Vocoder says, "Leave a message for Jones."

Even though he's rehearsing it as the recording instructs him what to do, he nearly chokes when the tone sounds and it's time to speak. "Erm. Hi. This is Howard. Howard Moon, we met at the Velvet Onion? I wondered if you might like to--" like to what? Something bleeps in his ear. "Oh, you're ringing me back. Hold-- erm. I'm about to-- never mind." He fumbles over to the waiting call. "Hello?"

"Somebody ring Jones?"

"Er, yes, I did. This is Howard. Howard Moon, we met at the--"

"Alright, Howard?" Jones actually sounds happy to hear from him. He also sounds like he's in a train or a shop from all the background noise. "How'd it go with Vince?"

"Terribly, as it happens."

"Oh, shit! Bugger, I'm sorry. I didn't wanna make it worse."

"It's been getting worse for a long time."

"Oh. Well. Can I help at all?"

"I was wondering if you'd show me what you were talking about with the toy trumpet and the typewriter. I mean, if you aren't busy. If you want. Sometime."

"Yeah, brilliant. Cheer you right up, that will. Come round in like an hour, yeah? 118 Hatpowder Street. Oh, I gotta go, this wanker's making a mess of me radio tubes. Yeah, I called you a wanker, Rick, look what you're doing to the--" The line goes dead.

Howard's at a bit of a loss. An hour from now is half past seven, prime dinner hour. Does that make this a dinner invitation? And what should he bring? Howard Moon does not arrive empty-handed when he's invited somewhere. But Jones isn't exactly the sort to give wine or potted basil, and might not mean to serve him anything anyway. In the end, he makes himself a cheese sandwich, pilfers a couple of vintage radios from the 'broken, ~~probably~~ not possessed' box in the stockroom, shouts to the flat at large that he's going out, and buys a mix'n'match of his favourite lagers on the way to the bus.

He's there at half-seven on the nose and dismisses the brief idea of wandering round for a bit to be more fashionably late. That's not his style, though, and Jones doesn't seem to mind his style the way it is, unlike _some_.

He hasn't even knocked at the 'House of Jones' door when it jerks open and he finds himself eye to eye with Dan, who's got a slightly bent unlit cigarette in his mouth and is smirking at Howard.

"Hello, I'm--"

"Your date's here!" Dan calls over his shoulder and pushes past Howard. His smirk just gets deeper when Jones shouts 'oh fuck off!' from somewhere within.

Howard hesitantly crosses the threshold and Jones bounds up from nowhere. "Fuck off Dan, not fuck off you," he says with a disarming grin. "Alright? C'mon in, 's that lager? Genius, we never get nothing but Stella round here." Howard steps through into a sea of purple and posters and clutter and can't think of anything to say, not that he could get a word in edgewise. "Don't mind Dan. He's a sarky old prick but he's lovely if he'll let you know him-- shit, bakelite, are these for me? Cheers. Step into the casa, bit of a tip but it's home-- hey, 're you hungry? Dan made tikka masala, sort'f even tastes like it."

And before Howard knows it he's sunk into a dubious old sofa eating homemade curry out of a My Little Pony bowl, unable to remember why he was so nervous about coming here. Jones pulls godawful screeches out of things that were never meant for the production of music and doesn't care if it's trendy or what his stylish mates might think. It thrills Howard just as much as it makes his heart hurt, because Jones has got that magic about him that Vince now only shows brief glimpses of, but he's held onto it and let it grow into one of the mad beautiful things Vince used to dream up, full and breathing and alive. It's infectious and magnetic and makes Howard want to _create_, but the thing is, it's still Vince he wants to run home and share it with.

Somehow Jones senses this, when past midnight they're sprawled on the floor and half drunk. Jones props up on his elbow and just says, "Tell me about him."

Howard does, from the very beginning. About the hyperactive sunshiney kid who borrowed a sheet of paper from him on a stalled train and handed it back with a picture of Howard he'd drawn from across the aisle, not surrounded by buskers and tired mothers, but in a jungle full of fantastical marker-pen beasts. How one day he found he couldn't get rid of Vince, and how one day soon after he found he didn't want to. Of the first night in the zoo, when Vince was terrified but buzzed with the excitement of this new adventure, wide awake and asking what every noise was and making up stories for the ones Howard couldn't identify. Of soothing him through nightmares he refused to explain, and of a very specific morning where Howard woke up to realise that someone he'd seen as an annoying but adored younger brother was actually the most beautiful thing he'd ever seen. Of insult and injury every time he tried to tell Vince how he felt, shrinking back and lashing out because rather than stand on his head daily to please Howard, Vince is now the unpleasable one. About not knowing how he'd turned into someone Vince could barely even like, let alone admire and respect (but need, occasionally, yes) and how Vince, to his dismay, is now doing the same.

Maybe it's the drink or the lingering secondary smoke, or maybe it's just the relief of having someone to tell all this to who isn't already on Vince's side, but Howard finds his cheeks are wet and that the shoulder of Jones's patched-together leopard and neon t-shirt is very soft and smells of purple bubblegum. He thinks of Charlie and guerrilla Tesco missions and pancake nights and wants to sob.

"He must care, yeah? Else he'd've pissed off ages ago," Jones says. The fact that he's twisting the front of his hair into a plastic children's barrette does take away a bit from the wisdom of the statement.

"Or maybe I should've stayed gone. Maybe I'm just like the old dog you can't bear to shoot."

"Old fuckin' Yeller? Get stuffed, Moon. Give him a chance not to be a tit. Maybe he'll surprise you."

"What do you mean?"

"Well...be nice? Show him you're still the same poetic tosser he followed round the zoo?"

"Oh, thanks."

"I dunno. Maybe you shouldn't, seeing as where my last idea got you." Then he bounds across the room and returns with a guitar that he thrusts into Howard's hands. "Here now, I've opposite of cheered you up. Show me the fastest fingers in Leeds."

There's something about the way he says it, despite the obvious guitar, that gives Howard pause. "You mean...musically, right?"

Jones laughs and bites his lip. "I did, but...." He puts the guitar down and kisses Howard, not for a joke or by force or to make anyone jealous or because anyone's got a sword, but just, apparently, because he wants to. So, technically--or not-technically, but by the rules of what's good and right--this is Howard's first kiss.

It's a good one, not that Howard's got much basis for comparison. A lot like the last time Jones kissed him, except he's not putting on a show. Jones kisses like he talks, animated and a little bit breathless. His lips are soft, sugary from the candy bracelet he's been systematically chewing all the blues off of and one of his hands is doing fluttery ticklish things to a bit of exposed skin at the bottom of Howard's shirt.

Howard imagines taking this to its logical conclusion, and that causes tingling and stirring where it should, but there aren't fireworks and flashing lights. It could be good, though, he thinks -- the two of them up late nights with turntables and trumpets and no gulf of past cruelty between them. Maybe fireworks right off aren't how it goes. Maybe you've got to earn them over time. Maybe kissing Vince made him feel blind and dizzy because he wanted it for so long. But the real problem is that he hasn't stopped wanting it.

Jones pulls back and smiles, not all besotted and starry, just pleased like he's had a nice treat, and Howard knows: it was just a kiss.

"I'm sorry," Howard says, because he truly is. It would be easy, but it wouldn't be _right._ Not wrong, mind, but not right.

"No need. Think we're sort'f in the same boat."

It's probably wrong to be relieved at someone else's unrequited love, but Howard is. "Dan?"

"For ages. Think I might get there someday, but..." Jones laughs. "Pair of right old saps, we are, passin' up a good shag for a maybe-someday."

Since it's not going to happen, Howard doesn't bother to inform Jones of his lack of practical knowledge in that particular arena.

"Guitar?" Jones says.

Howard takes it gratefully and it washes away most of his discomfort over what's just happened, since Jones doesn't seem bothered at all.

Howard is improvving up a veritable hurricane when Dan slopes in, quietly enough that Howard's too lost in the music until he's sat on the sofa smoking and grumbles, "Sounds like Cliff Richard."

Jones throws a cushion at him. "Shut your gob. I'm recording."

"I suppose you think you can do better, sir?" Howard says, full up with defiant confidence because Jones is a very good audience, and Cliff Richard doesn't even play guitar, thank you very much. He's also a bit afraid Dan will be able to tell what went on earlier and hopes to distract him.

Dan stares him down. It looks like there might be a squint-off in the works, but it turns out he's been deciding something. He holds out his hands and Howard passes the guitar. What Dan plays isn't exactly Jazz, or exactly anything, unless Django Reinhardt getting mugged by a Skiffle gang is a genre, but Howard has to admit it sounds good. Jones is somehow gaping and beaming at the same time, though Dan doesn't see it because he's got his eyes closed. When Dan stops, Howard doesn't get a chance to comment--a technicolour whirlwind blows through the room that turns out to be Jones throwing his arms round Dan's neck, guitar and all, and Howard knows it's time to go.

  
3.

Dan's been awake for over an hour, but he hasn't stirred an inch from the awkward half-sitting position he fell asleep in, because Jones is still dead to the world with his head in Dan's lap. Jones, who despite nearly a decade of friendship, properly heard Dan play guitar for the first time last night and was fucking thrilled. Hugged him and said, 'You lying bastard, you're brilliant!' and kissed him for the second time in three days. The night after Dalston's own French farce, it was just a damp peck on the forehead, easy to dismiss as friendly comfort because Dan's leg was hurting him. Last night wasn't so simple. Last night was full on the mouth, at first just an innocent smack of Jonesian joy, but then Dan parted his lips and kissed back and it was all sugar and warmth and went on for ages. Afterward, with Jones smiling down at him, Dan panicked and pretended to be drunker than he was. Jones let him (though Dan is fairly sure he heard a sigh) and went back to mixing.

Dan can admit to himself that he did it (the guitar playing, not the kiss, which is a whole other Pandora's box of reasons) because of how ridiculously excited Jones was over Howard. Jones goes on these sorts of crazes for one person or another every so often. A week or two or a couple of months at the outside in which he's constantly with them and talking about them, and then they just sort of fall off the map. Some he still sees, some he can't even remember their names right away a little while down the line. Dan's never let himself get too bothered about them invading his space, as no one who lives rent-free in a squat really has any right to complain, and before now he's never even really been all that fussed about them monopolising Jones. He's not even sure if it's about Howard himself (the physical resemblance is fucking creepy if you take away the dodgy moustache and the dressed-in-the-dark clothes, and on top of that he seems interested in Jones's musical alchemies in a way that Dan doesn't have the knowledge to be) or just the state of mind he's been in since...well, _since._ But something about Howard and his presence and the other night is setting off all these alarm bells. Maybe because Dan himself started out as one of those crazes and just happens to have outlasted the rest, but he's been a bitch to live with lately (it's really gone beyond _lately_ now and is dangerously verging into permanent _is_ territory) and he's seen Jones's patience wear thin at points. He has nothing to offer, really, nothing to inspire interest anymore, and if Jones finally goes off him like he's gone off all the others, there'll be the only person he knows who hasn't got some ulterior motive lost.

Obviously he's a bit stuck on the kissing too. It's nothing they haven't done before, but one or both of them has always been massively under the influence and it's been politely not mentioned again. Last night they were tipsy at worst, which for them is practically stone sober. So there's no excuse for it. Not that Jones ever needs an excuse to kiss anyone. It sort of surprised Dan that there actually was one for kissing Howard. Dan has no excuse for Vince--it's really the opposite of an excuse because the only reason they said a word to each other was a brief case of mistaken identity in the dark. Quickly resolved, but the fact remains that he was about to go to bed with someone he'd mistaken for Jones. Any denial over wanting to sleep with the real Jones went away years ago, but Jones has since slotted into the 'pretty much all I've got' position, and while Jones is a great proponent of casual sex, Dan's pretty sure he'd fuck it up at any level, like he fucks everything up. Turns everything he touches to shit, isn't even speaking to his own sister, and keeps anything decent he's done closely guarded and locked away because something always comes along to make it meaningless when he tells. It's surprising that Jones still shines as brightly as he does even after extended contact with Dan, honestly.

Jones sleeps like a child, mouth open and arms flung wide. One is trapped behind Dan's back and will probably be numb when he wakes. Dan doesn't know what time it was when the music stopped seeping into his sleep and Jones came and tucked himself up against Dan's side. He might have woken briefly and stroked Jones's hair or he might not have, and he can't decide whether he hopes he did or hopes he didn't. He wants to now but doesn't. It's probably creepy, sitting here watching him. Some people transform in sleep, shake off the frowns and furrowed brows of the worries of the world, but Jones looks just the same, like he might burst out laughing at any moment. Waking him will mean finding out whether or not Jones is going to let him off this time, but Dan needs to piss and can't reach his cigarettes and might as well get it over with.

He shifts and gives Jones's shoulder a nudge. "Jones."

"Hmm." Jones's eyes open slowly and he groans and stretches his body full length like a cat, exposing a pale sliver of stomach that will get burnt to a crisp at Glastonbury in a couple of weeks. "A'right, Dan."

"Need a piss."

Jones budges up long enough for Dan to stand and then flops back.

Dan uses the toilet and brushes his teeth and stares at the mirror. He's not on the best of terms with the thing. He's not vain, but the lines round his eyes getting deeper and the occasional grey whisker remind him that he's too close to forty for comfort without very much to show for it. He was meant to have changed the world by now, wasn't he? Not that he still entertains any illusions about that, but everything about him seems to scream sad old bastard and he's not all right with it.

He starts when Jones calls through the door, "You fall in or what? C'mon, 'm burstin'."

Dan lets Jones in and slouches off to the kitchen, flicks on the kettle and rifles around several Marlboro packets until he finds one that's not empty. He ought to give up, he knows, but he lights one anyway, even though he smoked so many last night that his chest feels wheezy and he doesn't really want it. They have tea and some questionable toast and Jones tells him about some friend of Howard's who restores old vinyl and might finally be the one to have the parts he needs to convert his ancient BSR deck to direct-drive and fulfill his fantasy of a whole gig spinning his gran's 78 collection. He's not sure it's a tribute she would appreciate, but Dan didn't really know her, and she did raise Jones, so maybe she'd understand.

It's any other morning. Jones doesn't mention guitars or kissing and is apparently letting Dan off. But Dan isn't letting himself off. He can feel it hanging there in a way he never has before. He keeps staring at Jones too long and not knowing what to say. He eventually claims he needs a shower before he says something he shouldn't. He jerks off out of habit, quick and quiet and buisnesslike and does his best to ignore the long-ago memories of Jones naked and sweaty and wrapped around him that sometimes like to bubble up to the surface. He doesn't let himself wonder what it would have been like all these years if he hadn't made that night mean nothing. Not like they'd be married with a dog or anything. He'd probably be amongst the legion of unremembered names.

Jones has a gig tonight, so he's luckily deep into sorting out his tracks and deaf to all else when Dan gets a call from McSwain's saying they'd like to see another story from him. Ringing him absolute first thing in the morning, if he's got the time difference right, and paying to do it when they could send an email for nothing. It's a pretty brilliant feeling, actually, and his first thought is to go and tell Jones. But he can't, can he, because then he'd have to explain about the story they've already published. He can't really explain why he didn't tell Jones in the first place, because he's never had any personal hand in devaluing anything Dan's done and is always happy for Dan when something goes down the right way. He read the first draft of 'Rise of the Idiots' out loud with running commentary. But then, that didn't go down the right way after all and started a shitstorm avalanche.

Dan sits on the sofa and opens his laptop (Barley's old one, Frankensteined back together by Jones and never given back) to search for something he can use. Jones is murdering an accordion and it gives Dan an idea about Paris, where he's only been on a school trip but seems as good a setting as any for a falling-apart couple whose umbrella has broken. He names them Dave and James before he realises what he's done and hastily backspaces, blushing, to change the pronouns and name them Robert and Amy. Robert is cold and distant and made nervous by her intensity. Amy's memory colours everything into something cinematic that it might have been but wasn't. They are not writers or musicians or artists. Dan gives them boring jobs and IKEA furniture and a cat. This does not frustrate them. Amy steals a replacement umbrella out of the stand by a restaurant door.

Dan has to interrupt his writing and find a map of Paris to see if it's possible to walk to the Eiffel Tower along the river, if there's a bridge to pause on where Robert can tell Amy he's going home and won't be there when she gets back. Jones is tuning a guitar now but he's got an ear for beats rather than notes and everything's a bit off. They both look up at the same moment. Jones smiles at him, not his usual but a shy, tentative one. He's not sure either, then. Dan gets up to take the guitar, tunes it and hands it back.

"Cheers," says Jones, and then, "Oi, Dan?"

"Yeah?"

"Will you play something? For the mix, I mean."

"Weren't you recording last night?" He can't say 'last night' without looking down.

"Space ran out in the middle of your bit. I'd had it running like four hours."

There's no real reason for Dan to play anything; Jones is a decent enough guitarist for his own purposes and he could presumably use something of Howard's anyway. But he wants something of Dan's, and Dan rather likes the idea of being part of what Jones is making. "Like what?"

Jones shrugs. "Don't matter. There's no theme or nothing."

And knowing Jones, whatever Dan does play won't sound much like itself in the end. If he were better at thinking on his feet, he'd come up with something that would give Jones some kind of a message, but what would that even be? The only thing in his head is a question that won't even form itself, mired up somewhere in between _what do we do now_ and _why can't I_, and this isn't a romantic comedy. No alternating cuts of soulful gazes across the room, and the hour he's spent in Amy's head was an hour too long if he's thinking this way. So he just makes something up, strings together bits and pieces stolen from real musicians that don't say anything at all, or if they do it's a gibberish of borrowed words like a fucked radio.

When Dan opens his eyes, because for some reason he can never stop them closing, Jones is staring.

"What?"

"You looked happy," Jones says like an apology.

He really has nothing to say to that and squirms away back to his computer. Jones follows him under no pretext at all except to sit down and take Dan's hand. This'll be it, then.

"I wish I could bottle that up'n slip it in your drink when you're sat there hating the world."

It's such a perfectly Jones idea. And Dan gets the sentiment, but it also means that Jones would rather Dan weren't such a miserable fuck all the time. Of course he does. Not that Dan blames him, but he can't be that. "The sunshine's your job round here. I'm the grumpy bastard."

"Yeah, you are," Jones says with blunt affection.

Dan looks down at their joined hands. Jones's seems small and delicate in his, though it isn't. There's a white web of scars on the back of it where he punched through a window a few years ago after too many uppers. They disappear under his tangle of bracelets and emerge as two long thin lines that reach halfway up his arm. Dan remembers when they were red and angry and dotted at the sides from all the stitches. No, he's not delicate. What's hanging between them is. Jones wants to hold his hand and make him happy, but there's a world of difference between having a fucked-up best mate and a fucked-up...whatever it'd make them.

"Don't you even fucking tell me you can't," Jones says with a fierce, harsh edge like he's reading Dan's mind. Sometimes Dan thinks he really can.

"Shouldn't, then."

"Shouldn't what? Have something you want?"

"I'll fuck it up, Jones. You know that."

"No, I really don't." He's not letting Dan get his hand away. "Maybe I'll fuck it up. You know I'm a right slag when'm pissed. Or maybe we'll both fuck up a lot but it'll be all right."

Dan feels dizzy and drunk and remembers how easy it is to jump out of a window. But he also remembers the way Jones looked when he came to see Dan in hospital. Never that awful before or since, not even when his gran died because that wasn't sudden, unshaven and bruise-eyed and calling Dan every name in the book before petting him like a wounded animal and spending the next two months looking after him without the smallest hint he'd rather be doing otherwise. But that's not actually a point _pro._ "Look, you're all I've fucking got, all right?" he says, because if there ever was a time to admit that it's now.

"If that's true, hadn't you better make the most of it?"

"You're not actually going to take no for an answer, are you?"

"Course I will, I'm not some psychotic rapist. But not just cos you're scared."

"I'm not--" Okay, scared may be the word for it.

Jones climbs over him and straddles his lap, leans in too close, but not close enough to keep Dan from having to be the one to decide. "Go on, I dare ya."

It'll never be the same, no matter what. If Dan refuses and runs, they'll fall apart anyway. You can't break a silence this long and come out the other side in one piece. So he closes the half inch or so that's left and kisses Jones. Sober and premeditated and with strings attached, and everything he felt the first time they did this comes back with fucking knobs on. Weightless drowning and Jones kissing him like he's something wonderful. Jones's hands are in his hair and already they're grinding against each other through their jeans (wanting that was never the problem) and Dan can't feel he deserves this, but Jones seems to think he does.

Jones stops and looks down and Dan can't help but think he's perfect like this. "We're doin' this, right? You don't get to take it back."

"I won't, I won't," Dan murmurs because the other things he wants to say get all twisted up in his throat, and pulls Jones back to him.

It'll be a miracle if Dan doesn't fuck this up in some truly spectacular way, but maybe he's about due one.

  
4.

Vince hears Howard come in. It's some sort of vile injustice that Howard's getting in later than he did, he thinks, pulling his duvet tighter round himself with a discontented huff. Maybe he was waylaid by a gang of thug badgers on his way back from Jazz Club and passed out in a gutter. Serve him right, wouldn't it? Well, if he wasn't really hurt. Maybe just a bit muddy and embarrassed. It's better anyway than the image he can't scrub from his mind of Howard sucking that druggy DJ's tongue, which gets brought back every time Howard mentions him or goes out to see him. There are clearly drugs involved, because no one who wasn't off their head on something would willingly accompany Howard to Jazz Club.

After the one night where Vince came home to find Howard returning half-pissed and smelling of cigarettes and looking _happy_, he's been like some jazzy zen master.  'Round Jones's for a bit of a jam,' he says like it's normal, not even smug, like he's not even bothered what Vince thinks. Since then it's only been afternoons off and early evenings that Howard's set out with instruments and electronic bits, tonight being an exception, but not even Vince pointing out that Jones must have something better to do with his nights has got any sort of a rise. Howard's mobile now bleeps nearly as much as Vince's does and he laughs at texts all day in the shop. Vince snuck a look at one but it said _brilliant im walkin all funny_ and he decided he didn't want to see any more.

Bloody Jones. Vince has heard of him before, of course. These days he's apparently the last word amongst those who think they're too cool to worship Vince. Vince can't even work out why. He doesn't _do_ anything, or cultivate fans or really promote himself at all. He just sets up some bizarre noise panto with dollies and dinosaurs and people love him for it. Till now it's not really bothered him, since the people who think either one of them is the Mayor of something don't cross over much, but that was before the tit was in _his_ flat tongueing _his_ best mate. And what's that about? Howard's the straightest man alive--bar the roof incident, and an unfortunate misunderstanding involving Saboo in fancy dress, and Old Gregg, and Eleanor--alright, maybe not the straightest alive, but if it's a skinny bloke with feathered hair he wants, it would make a lot more sense for him to want Vince, who is skinnier and has better hair.

_And what if he did, hmm?_ Vince has always been no end annoyed that his conscience, when it chooses to speak, sounds like Howard being smug about stationery maintenance. _What if he did? Where would that get him? Insulted and tossed aside, sir, like yesterday's jam._

__Once upon a time, Vince wanted nothing more than to be as close to Howard as he could, in any way he could. But Howard kept pushing away and getting jazzy-freakier by the minute, and it was just easier not to think of it at all.

Until the roof. Which almost...well, anyway, they both took it back. Getting off with Stan or whatever his name was most certainly did _not_ have to do with him in the drunken dark vaguely resembling a Howard who had not been dressed by blind lemurs. (_Denial is not your colour, little man._)

"Piss off, Howard," Vince mutters into the dark, and forces himself to sleep thinking of capes and jungle nights (soup crimps and satsumas and someone to grab onto when the monsters got too real).

In the morning, Vince looks at the expanse of straighteners and creams and glitter on his dresser and just feels tired. He puts on Bowie and makes himself dance in the mirror and makes sure his hair is perfect, and his smile is nearly genuine by the time he emerges. He expects it to be yet another morning that there's not a cup of tea waiting for him in the kitchen, but there it is, steaming away next to two slices of toast with blackcurrant jam. It perks him up in a way the scarf he's wearing (purportedly once worn by Debbie Harry herself, and it better have been for what he paid) does not. Maybe Howard's decided Vince matters again.

Vince collects his breakfast and takes it down to the shop. He's already late, of course, and brewing up a good excuse. The rug growing into snakes and having to fight his way out with a machete. But he doesn't manage to give it, because there's a suitcase by the stockroom door and Howard's on the phone. "...No, better make it two dozen. Red ones."

What, roses? That wasn't 'Sorry for ignoring you' toast, it was 'I'm off to shack up with my new speedhead boyfriend, so here's something to soften the blow' toast. Howard's wearing black. Still a rollneck, but not in the beige family. Apparently, Jones has powers that Vince does not. Vince sinks into his chair and begins leafing through the daily magazine pile out of habit. 'Time Out Hoxditch' is first, and oh, it was Dan, not Stan, because here's his name next to a glowing review of bloody Jones's last gig. Vince bins the entire thing.

"Bad review?" Howard says with a concerned eyebrow as he puts the phone down.

"No review."

"Well, journalists can't be everywhere at once, Vince." Howard says it like he's actually trying to be comforting.

"When are you going, then?"

"Just after lunch. Naboo said we can close up early." The little extraterrestrial traitor. "I'm surprised you remembered. You'd be welcome if you'd like to come."

"What!?"

"I know it's not your scene, but you always used to. My mother still likes you better than she likes me, I think."

"What's your mother got to do with you...going?"

"To Leeds, Vince. For her birthday?"

Red tulips. Howard always sends his mother red tulips. He's going away for a couple of nights at most. Vince laughs and laughs, because how thick could he possibly be, till it gets a bit hysterical and he's surely going red in the face.

"It's not that funny," Howard grumps.

"No, no, I thought--never mind. I can't anyway. I promised Vectra I'd be some sort of gothic wood-nymph in a giant stiletto."

"Wearing them, you mean?"

"No, like the whole thing's in a massive shoe the size of a bouncy castle. Or maybe it's a bouncy castle that looks like a stiletto. Well avant-garde anyway. I'll make your mum a card or sommat, though, yeah?"

"Yeah, she'd like that."

Vectra will probably forget to tell him where the shoot is, not answer her mobile, and then ream Vince out for not turning up, but he technically did promise, and as relieved as he is to have been wrong and as much as he likes Howard's mum, a wild evening in Leeds still isn't high on his list.

Vince spends all morning on the card, leaving Howard to alienate the customers and try to sweep up the glitter and paper trimmings as Vince works. They bicker a bit and Howard lectures Vince on appropriate glue choices, but he seems more relaxed about it, like he doesn't really mind. He does make Vince promise to clear up and close the shop properly, though, since the finishing touches nearly make Howard miss his train.

Vince keeps open a bit past noon just because he really hates settling the till. There has been only one sale for €76, but Howard will somehow just _know_ if he doesn't count it all properly. He smiles when it starts raining, more because it means he doesn't have to sweep the pavement than because he remembers how Howard likes rain on train windows.

Then he scowls (proper scowls, not a loveable pout) because he knows who's coming up the street. The lime-green umbrella with JONES spray-stencilled on it is a bit of a dead giveaway, and how rubbish a thing to do is that? He's got on a matching mack that Vince remembers from Topshop two _years_ ago. Vince really hopes he's just walking by. To his knowledge Jones has never been over here and this really isn't the time to start. But no, he's definitely coming in, and Vince can't find the key quickly enough to do anything to stop it.

"Alright," Vince says stonily when Jones walks in all green and grinning with his rubbish umbrella dripping all over the floor.

The smile fades and Jones bites his lip. Good. He knows he's not wanted. "Howard in?"

"No." Vince can't help but say it a bit triumphantly, since apparently Howard didn't bother to tell him he was leaving.

"Right. Could you give him this, then?"

Jones hands over a CD case labelled 'Moon &amp; Jones.' That's just wrong. "What's this, your sordid speedy sex tape?"

"Yeah, that's it." Jones rolls his eyes. "Don't bother eating it or smashing it or nothing. If the sharp edges don't get you, the jazz will."

Howard has told Jones things about him. Not the nice things, the shitty things. The things that make him look stupid and mean. "Yeah, whatever." He doesn't care what this berk thinks of him. He doesn't.

"You got vinyl here, yeah?"

What, now he wants to shop? Maybe Jones cares what Vince thinks of him. Hah. "Shop's closed."

"Right." Or maybe he doesn't. "See ya, then."

Vince seizes the key from where it's been attempting to hide on the footrest of the barber's chair and bolts the door behind Jones before any more unsavoury characters can come waltzing in. He nearly falls on his face slipping about in the Jones-shaped puddle, but fortunately there's no one nearby to see.

He spends an hour making sure the money is counted perfectly, all the coins tucked up in their little colour-coded wrappings. Vectra does not ring and Vince doesn't even bother trying to find her. The CD sits on the end of Vince's bed taunting him until he finally admits defeat and puts it on.

It's not bad at first, actually. Too blippy to really dance to properly, which makes it all the more baffling that Jones has any sort of following, but not bad. Then another beat comes in, and Vince jumps out of his skin because it's carrying Howard's voice. "Think you can do better, sir?" it says like Howard's standing right by him. Then Howard's guitar, definitely Jazz but all torn to bits and mixed up with electrical noises and snares and breaking glass. He sits through the entire thirty minute track, itching and glaring and wanting to pitch the whole stereo out the window. He'd almost rather it were a sex tape. Howard shagging somebody, it had to happen sometime. But Howard making music--even pretty crap music--with this sparkly berk is beyond the pale. Trumpet bebop with the blind old looney, fine, but electro-fusion? That's Vince's. That's _theirs._ That's not for Howard to do with anybody else. It was Moon and Noir, not Moon and bloody Jones.

_And when's the last time you even asked him to do anything with you? _But Howard's got all old and weird! Vince is still living down the Black Tubes nightmare-- he can't do that with the crab of trapped wind in jazzy shorts!

_Fine, let Jones have him._ Sometimes Vince really hates his brain. Brain cell, apparently. Howard enjoyed telling him that one. He has vague memories, hazy like they're half dreamt, of talking to a scuba-suited Howard in a pink office. Of floating and feeling his blood sing. They don't make sense, so he's never told Howard.

He used to tell Howard everything, sense or not. Howard would scoff sometimes, but not the way he does now, and never if it was important. Like the time Vince was absolutely certain his white cowboy boots were being haunted by the angry spirit of Ian Curtis. It sounds idiotic even to Vince now, but he was what? seventeen then, and truly terrified. Howard solemnly got some Haint-Away powder off Naboo and helped him perform an exorcism.

Vince doesn't even know what happened to those boots. He misses them sometimes.

Vince hasn't realised the CD is still spinning silently round, so he squawks and jumps when a loud heartbeat rings through the room. No, not a heart, just a drum. It's not the Ghost of Vince's Past under the floorboards. It starts as a slow steady pulse and then begins to skip beats like it's frightened or excited. And then, all distorted and echoey, Howard's voice again. "And suddenly he was the most beautiful thing I'd ever seen." A loud jarring squeal-smash like a car accident, then silence.

Vince's own heart is skipping away like that drumbeat. What is that? What does he mean? Who does he mean? He's not just reading a line--Howard can't act his way out of a soap bubble and that's real feeling there, about two inches shy of cream poetry.

The CD offers no answers. It's stopped and the stereo display is blinking through its little screensaver disco.

_You want him to mean you._

"Shut up!" Vince shouts.

He yanks the CD out and marches it to Howard's room like it's in trouble, throws it down on the bed without any supper.

Vince looks round the room, Howard's little beige oasis in a world full of colour. The only things not some shade of brown are things Vince recognises: a glittery birthday card from oh-shit-off ago hung up on the corkboard amongst _Global Explorer_ clippings. A pink Charlie peeking out of the alphabetised monochrome of books on the shelf. The electric blue clay duck Vince made when they had to give an educational session to some schoolchildren (Howard's brown owl broke in the kiln) propping up one end of the bookmark display case. A yellow feather in amongst the pot of river rocks, which Vince perfectly remembers picking out of his boa and putting in Howard's hair for a laugh one night.

He's pretty sure there's some sort of symbolism in all this, but that's more Howard's department and Vince can't begin to get his head round it. Instead he goes to his room and digs a poncho out of the wardrobe.

Naboo's out on the settee with his hookah, all jelly and glassy-eyed. "Were you killing a cat earlier?" he asks a spot somewhere to the left of Vince.

"No."

"Oh. I was gonna say, don't throw it out, but as you weren't killing one, never mind." He seems to focus at last. "What's the matter?"

"Nothing."

"You're wearing a poncho. That always means something's wrong."

"I was cold," Vince lies. "Where's Bollo?"

"Sent him round Asda for some Jaffa Cakes."

Oh, Christy. The last time that happened, they ended up with four hundred pair of blue tights. Naboo is unconvinced there's nothing wrong and tells Vince some shaman fable about a guy he knew in the seventies who built a hut out of matchsticks and set himself on fire.

"Are all your stories from the seventies?"

"Yeah, 1968 pretty much obliterated anything else." He holds out the second mouthpiece to Vince. "Have a toke, you'll feel better."

"Er, no thanks, Naboo."

"Suit yourself." He takes a long pull off both at once. "D'you ever wonder about gooseberries?"

"Yeah, cheers, Naboo, I feel much better."

Vince goes back to Howard's room and tries to force himself to work all this out, but all that happens is he falls asleep and gets dragged into a nightmare where he's singing in the Velvet Onion (but it's not the Onion, it's the keepers' hut at the Zooniverse, but it's called the Velvet Onion) and the audience is full of Howards sitting with Joneses who are either jeering or can't remember his name.

"Vince Noir! Vince fucking Noir!" he shouts till he's hoarse, but they don't hear him. They just laugh and smash blue clay ducks with wooden hammers.

And then, oh thank you Jagger, one of the Howards remembers. An actor Howard in a beret. "Vince!" he yells, "Vince!" and shakes him by the shoulders. Vince gasps and his eyes fly open to find the last bit wasn't a dream. Here's Howard, hand on each of Vince's shoulders, shaking him and calling his name. The room's full of light; it's morning.

"Howard--"

"Oh, thank God. Are you all right, Vince? I couldn't wake you." Howard's all frowning worry with his tiny eyes stretched wide open.

"It was horrible! I couldn't make them know me!" Vince's head feels all wrong, like he's been shoved into too-tight drainpipes and been made to sleep in a cupboard full of jazz records.

Howard shocks the breath out of him: embraces him, briefly, roughly, as though he's been lost in a desert and they've just found each other-- but oh, when that happened, they just argued. It's over in the same second it takes Vince's brain cell to tell him to hold on.

"Don't scare me like that," Howard grumbles.

"I didn't mean to."

"Were you on something?"

"_No_. Well, maybe Naboo's hash fumes, but not on purpose, honest." He feels all croaky and his throat hurts.

"What are you doing in here, Vince?"

Oh. Right. "Leavin' you the CD your boyfriend dropped off. Guess I got tired." Vince digs the case out from the twisted blanket at his ankles and hands it to Howard.

"My--" Howard looks at the label. "Jones is not my _boyfriend._"

"Whatever. He left it, I brought it." This would be about the right time to get out of here, but Vince gets tangled up in his poncho and his limbs feel all muddled like big jellies, and it's easier just to flop back and close his eyes.

"You know what I think, Vince?" Howard's using that all-knowing superior tone that makes Vince want to clobber him. "I think you're jealous."

"Jealous? Have you seen him? Name spray-stencilled on his brolly like he's going away to school for the blind? Ooh, I've only got one name, I'm so edgy, I'm like Sting. I paint my name on all me pants while I throw tamales at a mixer and call it music! Jealous, ha. As if. You can have 'im."

"Half your stuff's got your name on it in sequins, Vince. And I didn't mean you're jealous of me."

"It's too bloody early for this, Howard. Piss off'n let me sleep." But it's like watching two cars you know are going to crash. He's not a rocket scientist, but he knows what Howard means. The thing is, he hasn't got an answer. All he knows is Howard's doing stuff with some twatbox that he used to do only with Vince, and he hates it. It makes him think all his shine has finally worn off and Howard's got himself an upgrade. Maybe it has worn off.

"D'you even like me anymore, Howard?" Vince makes himself look so he'll see the lie if Howard tries one.

He doesn't. "Sometimes I don't much," he sighs.

It's not one of the nasty things they say sometimes to get at each other. "Oh."

"Can you really blame me? Half the time you treat me like I'm worthless."

"You treat me like I'm stupid and ridiculous," Vince fires back.

Oddly, that seems to be what Howard was looking for. "You see? You don't like me all the time either."

No, he doesn't. Sometimes Howard pisses him off so much he could scream. Embarrasses him, even disgusts him once in a while. But he's _Howard._ Vince can only imagine life without him because that was so recently a reality, and it wasn't a nice one. "That don't mean I want an upgrade."

"Yes, you do! You're always after me about my hair or my clothes or my music or the way I eat Weetabix!"

"Not upgrade _you_, y'berk. Course I wanna sort out your hair and stop you wearing schizophrenic ecru or whatever, and the less said about the Weetabix, the better--you're like a hoover with teeth. But that's what I do, ain't it? I sort people out. Pretty 'em up. I can't help it. But you went out and got a whole new model."

"Is that what you think?" The sharp edges in Howard's tone have rounded off. "That Jones is your...replacement?"

"What'm I meant to think? Looks a bit like me, don't he? Talks a bit like me. Only he's still all new and shiny."

Howard's hand is tightening round his wrist, going in for a burn. Vince reaches out and jerks it away. "Don't."

And Howard says 'don't' at the same time. "Don't touch me."

Vince lets go and scowls. "Didn't hear you sayin' that to him."

"It was just a kiss."

"That's well rich, coming from you. Whatever happened to 'it'll be forever, sir?'"

"Maybe I've learnt there's no such thing." Howard's voice is creepy quiet and his eyes shift away.

There's a lock of hair falling over his forehead, all squashed from a train ride under the jazzy hat du jour. He looks like he ought to be given tea and biscuits and put to bed. It makes Vince all achy inside, like the time he accidentally ate Xooberonian curry. Only there's no potion for this. Well, there might be, but it'd probably turn one of them into a Black Metal sloth from another dimension or something. He wiggles over and rests his head as close to Howard's knee as he can get without touching, close enough that he can smell the all-purpose earth-friendly soap that Howard uses on everything.

They're not so much one whole person as two broken halves of different biscuits knocking about the bottom of the tin. "Can't we fix it?" Vince asks, and it's whinier than he meant to sound. He hardly even knows what he means. But Howard always does. Or used to.

Howard's laughter is hollow and theatrical. "I wouldn't even know where to begin."

"So, what, we just crumble? Mix up with all the currants and sugar bits and call it a day?"

"What?"

"Like biscuits."

"Maybe you should stick to fashion terms."

"Fine, like jeans, then. With a great gaping hole in the seat, but they're your favourite ones, and you can either say 'oh well' and bin 'em, or sew on some leopard silk and invent glam grunge."

"You wouldn't be caught dead in those."

"I'm trying here, all right? What're you doing? I'm unhappy in a poncho, for chrissakes! The universe may implode at any moment."

"I don't know what you want from me, Vince. There's not a magic button we can push."

"What if there was?"

"A magic button?"

"Yeah. What would it do?"

Howard knows. Vince can see that he knows exactly what magic Howard would want worked. "But there's not."

"But if there was."

"It'd...it'd make you consider my feelings once in a while."

Which is a fair point. But that isn't what Howard was thinking. "Shit off, that's not it."

"I need to open the shop."

"Fuck the shop! This is important!" Vince grabs Howard's hand to stop him standing up and refuses to let go when Howard tries to shake it off. He's sitting up on his knees, ill-balanced on the lumpy mattress. One of them pulls too hard and Vince topples forwards. Howard catches him, because Howard always catches him, even when everything's horrible and muddled like it is now, and though Vince doesn't really think about it, the only thing to do is grab on and cling. Attack cuddles, he used to call them a million years ago when he could do it without getting shouted at.

Howard doesn't shout. He goes still and rigid and drops his hands from where they're dug into Vince's armpits. He tries a weak shove, but Vince hangs on. Then a sighed-muttered, "Damn it," and, miraculously, an arm round Vince's back and a hand on the back of his head, and he's being properly held. By Howard, who smells of beige soap and overly manly aftershave and his mum's house. Vince panics briefly when Howard rests his cheek on his unwashed hair, which is probably manky and greasy, but this is the man who's seen him through flus and fevers and all sorts of disgusting things, and he doesn't seem to mind. And anyway, it's too nice for Vince to care for long.

It might be an hour they stay that way, or it might be just a minute. Vince feels it when the air around them sort of shifts, when Howard's heart starts to beat faster and the warm puffs of breath on his scalp become more frequent, and the hand that's been lying still on his back starts to rub a little pattern up and down his spine.

Vince knows what's coming. He looks up and lets it happen. It's nothing like the kiss on the rooftop. That was sloppy and mostly one-sided and just for show. This is...brilliant, actually. Warm and comfortable because that's just Howard, and illegally exciting because of the little moans in the back of Howard's throat and the way he sucks at Vince's lower lip like he somehow knows Vince likes that. It's a bit terrifying, too, because what the hell is it? If this were anyone else, he'd be going for belts and buttons about now, but Howard's never done any of that stuff (has he?) and Vince has got this looming feeling that once this kiss stops, nothing's ever going to be the same. They're going to have to look at each other and work out what it means, because Howard has to work out what everything means, and Vince hasn't got a clue.

This is not just a kiss. It stopped being just that when it didn't end after two seconds, if it ever had a chance of being _just_ anything. But if there's no _just_, that means there's going to be sex, and does he really want to do that with Howard? Vince's body shouts a resounding _yes!_ at the thought, but it can't be just that either. They're still crumbling jeans or torn biscuits or whatever, and a bit of groping and grinding isn't going to fix that. This isn't the magic button. It could all go so, so wrong.

Something has to end it sometime, so it might as well be Naboo shouting through the door, "Whenever you pair of testicles are done bumming, you might think of opening the shop! Just for a change, you know."

Howard's looking at him now, all just-kissed and shy. "Vince, I--"

"Later, yeah?" Vince says as gently as he can for someone trying to stop whatever cream-related ode might come spewing out. He's not got anything to say to one.

"Yeah." Howard doesn't sound happy, and leaving it till later might be just as bad as trying to thrash it all out in the five or so minutes they've got before Naboo comes back. Later means Howard will have time to stew over it and dream up a million and one ways to make it all worse.

Vince turns back after he's scrambled off the bed and pecks Howard on the lips. "Don't worry, all right?"

Howard nods, still a bit wobbly and uncertain-looking. Vince gives him more little kisses till he's smiling.

_Don't fuck this up, Noir._

__


End file.
